The main political task at this moment is to assemble the necessary social forces to defeat Bush and his counterparts in Congress and elsewhere.

The urgency of that task, however, should not be converted into a rationale for socialists and communists to push the mute button on the socialist alternative. To the contrary, we should bring our vision of socialism into the public square; we are, after all, the Communist Party and socialism is at the core of our identity.

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” — Martin Luther King Jr.

“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going for, body and soul. But … long, persistent work is required.

This season, besides gaiety, good food and drink (and may all of us have an abundance of these), brings moments of quiet reflection. Sometimes the reflection is of a personal nature; other times, it’s about the larger world in which we live.

Both are good for the soul. But here, I’m going to stick with the larger world – and making it a better one – with some reflections on socialism. It is a subject on which my thinking has changed significantly over the past decade, and continues to evolve.

“The Nature, Role, and Work of the Communist Party” first appeared on CPUSA.org on April 10, 2014. Read it on CPUSA.org.

Submitted for discussion by the National Board of the Communist Party

The two old bards of the socialist movement wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.“

Sounds good and seems easy enough to do. Right?

Wrong!

Not only is it a difficult needle to thread, but it also is something that, once done, isn’t necessarily good for all time. In fact, the thread has to be re-threaded as conditions of struggle change, and as we know only too well, conditions change constantly, sometimes in qualitative (big) ways.

“Convention Discussion: Toward a Modern & Mature 21st Century Communist Party” first appeared on CPUSA.org on February 20, 2014. Read it on CPUSA.org.

Submitted for discussion by the National Board of the Communist Party. This essay was originally a report to the National Board.

Given that we live in an era marked by economic stagnation, growing threats to humankind’s survival, changes in people’s sensibilities and thinking, the beginnings of a counteroffensive against corporate capital at the national and global level, and an ongoing regroupment of the communist movement on the level of theory and practices, it is no surprise that the features, nature, and role of the Communist Party, USA in the 21st century would be a subject of discussion as we head toward our 30th convention in Chicago.

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About Sam Webb.

I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world, to which I aim to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. I also teach online classes, but leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago. I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014. While I grew up in Maine and currently live in New York City, my politically formative years were spent in Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received my MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.